32 WILD BIRDS 



The untold variety of their forms and manner of 

 growth is always an interest, and often a surprise. 

 And then, where the oaks and beeches are free of 

 underwoods, their trunks, some dark-coloured, some 

 light grey according to whether they grow moss or 

 silvery lichen, or whether they are presented to view 

 on the rainy side or the dry have such a look of 

 personality about them. 



Take Mark Ash, the noblest beech wood in the 

 New Forest, if not the noblest in the world ; tree 

 personality is here any season of the year. Mysti- 

 cism is often viewed askance. It is known to 

 be a " cult " or weak fashion worn by those who wish 

 to be out of the common run hateful and bad 

 veneer. But there is a natural and irresistible 

 mysticism, a mysticism of woods, marshes, and 

 waters. The beeches of Mark Ash are full of it. 



Groups of these trees are groups of giants. Each 

 tree has individuality. To reach this state a beech 

 or oak must measure its life by centuries, and scores 

 of beeches in this part of the forest must be hundreds 

 of years old. There are traditional oaks, as those 

 of Boldrewood, said to be 600 or 800 years old the 

 800 a favourite reckoning, perhaps, because it carries 

 us back to about the time of the great Norman 

 hunting kings, the stark figures of New Forest story. 



These traditions, like the traditions of the great 

 yew trees of our chalk downs, belong to the realm 

 of fiction ; but it must be fact that many of the 

 beeches of Mark Ash are in their third, if not fourth, 

 century to-day. Their girth simply proves it. 



